


A Kind and Generous Man

by squirenonny



Series: Shardholders [1]
Category: Cosmere - Brandon Sanderson, Mistborn - Brandon Sanderson
Genre: Gen, Mistborn trilogy spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-26
Updated: 2014-06-26
Packaged: 2018-03-30 10:41:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3933709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squirenonny/pseuds/squirenonny
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leras watches his best friend become a monster and makes the hardest decision of his life.</p><p>Written for CFSWF 2014.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Kind and Generous Man

**Author's Note:**

> “Ati was once a kind and generous man, and you saw what became of him.” (WoK Epigraph 18)
> 
> “[Aon Ati] means hope.” (“The Hope of Elantris”)

I.

Ati was the youngest of the sixteen.

Not by much; he was well into his twenties by the time Adonalsium was shattered. But Leras knew him for years before that, and he always had a hard time seeing a man where he expected to see a boy.

Perhaps that was because Ati was one of the few of them who managed to hold onto his innocence through it all. Where the others saw death, destruction, and despair, Ati saw new beginnings.

“Things change,” Ati once said. “People die. Cities fall. We can’t stop that.” A smile, always hopeful, always encouraging, even surrounded by corpses. “All we can do is make sure it was worth it in the end.”

Leras was more skeptical. He’d been a soldier. He’d tried killing to protect, and it never worked. Death didn’t solve anything.

But with Ati around, he was almost willing to believe something good would come out of all this.

-

“I think Rayse hates me,” Ati whispered.

Leras looked at Ati, then at the hard-faced man sitting with Bavadin across the campfire. Rayse feigned disinterest, but his eyes kept drifting to Ati.

“Rayse hates everyone,” Leras said, but he edged forward to place himself between Ati and Rayse just the same. “He doesn’t like that you encouraged Tanavast.”

Ati started at that, giving Leras a strange look. His unruly red hair curled around the corners of his eyes.  Maybe if he combed it, Leras might stop thinking of him as a child. “What?” Ati asked. “Why?”

Leras didn’t answer at first. Ati was no longer the naïve boy Leras had once taken under his wing, but neither was he a schemer like so many of the others. It was no surprise Rayse had skipped over Ati in his attempted coup.

“Tanavast was close to giving up,” Leras said slowly. His eyes went to the king, who stared into the fire. Reya had her lips close beside his ears, but whatever she was saying didn’t lighten Tanavast’s dark expression. “The things we’ve done. The people who have died…”

“We’ve saved more than we killed,” Ati said. Leras didn’t know why the conviction in Ati’s voice still surprised him.

“More than we killed at Waeryn?”

Ati looked down. He poked at the gruel that had become their usual dinner. “That was bad,” he admitted. “We should have found a way to save the city.” He was silent for a long time, hair hiding the look in his eyes. Leras opened his mouth to comfort the boy, but Ati spoke first. “But it was still a victory. We stopped the enemy from getting the power hidden there.”

“I know.” Leras placed a hand on Ati’s shoulder. “And that was exactly what Tanavast needed to hear.”

Ati’s smile eased some of Leras’s fear. Fear that Rayse may have been right. That Tanavast wasn’t the leader they needed.

Oh, Leras would never have put Rayse in charge. The man was far too conniving, too hot-headed. But Skai was more decisive than Tanavast, and Aona had a way of holding the group together that no one else could quite match. With Tanavast in charge, and Rayse constantly rebelling against him, the sixteen were in danger of fragmenting.

And Leras would to anything to keep the group together. It was the only way to save their world.

II.

Ati still smiled.

Leras watched him and felt his heart break.

Ruin.

Of all the Shards, only Rayse’s was worse. What cruel god would make Ati the embodiment of death and decay?

But then, Leras had just watched God die.

Leras felt a stirring of unease that wasn’t entirely his own. He was Preservation now—a noble Shard, but still unsettling. This new power didn’t like belonging to one who had caused so much destruction. It chafed at Leras’s memories, rebelling against the sense of resignation that had kept him sane through all the fighting.

Once again, Leras caught himself thinking of the Shard as though it were sentient. It wasn’t. Not really. It was more of an instinct. A whisper in the back of his mind.

“Leras?” Edgli asked. Her fingers brushed his elbow and seemed to sink into the skin. Leras was dimly aware that he and his friends were no longer strictly corporeal. The Shards had changed them, and though they still looked human, Leras suspected it was more illusion than substance. “Everything alright?”

The changes were more pronounced in Edgli than the others. Her angular face seemed softer, almost translucent; her dark hair shone with colors Leras had never before noticed. And her eyes. They looked ancient.

Leras smiled at her, though he doubted he was as convincing as Ati. “Fine. I’m just worried.” His eyes drifted back to Ati, laughing as he spoke with Skai and Tanavast. Celebrating a hard-earned victory. Leras should be celebrating, too, but he found it hard.

“You see it, too?” Edgli’s fingers tightened around Leras’s elbow. The touch sent a chill through him. Like she was touching his soul.

“See what?” Leras asked.

“The future.”

Leras turned away. There was a knot in his stomach, a burning flame of unease that had been growing since he took up the power of Preservation. Yes, he saw the future, if only dimly. He saw enough to know that everything was changing.

It terrified him.

Rayse and Bavadin had already left. Leras wasn’t sorry to see them go, except that it meant an end to the sixteen. Despite the tension Rayse had stirred up, this group had become a kind of family to Leras. To all of them. Few cities had survived the Splintering and the wars leading up to it. Even Tanavast, newly-crowned king of the fractured nations, didn’t have a home to return to.

Edgli gave him an understanding smile. “You can’t stop change,” she said. “Preservation doesn’t have to mean stagnancy.”

Leras’s Shard rebelled against the thought. Change meant destruction. Ruin. He didn’t want things to change.

A dull ache had taken up residence behind Leras’s eyes. This power would take some getting used to. “I’m just tired,” he said.

But Edgli was no longer listening. Every muscle had gone tense, and she stepped forward with an almost predatory grace. “It’s beginning.”

Fear flared in Leras’s stomach. Ati and Tanavast clasped hands, melancholy in their eyes. Their postures spoke of farewell.

_No._

Leras started forward. His whole being shivered with fear on the edge of panic.

Ati intercepted Leras halfway to Tanavast.

 _It’s alright, Leras_.

A voice in Leras’s ear.

Shock numbed his limbs. He stared at Ati, wordless, horrified. Had Ati just spoken in his _mind_? Impossible.

“It’s for the best,” Ati said. His voice was soft, but this time Leras was certain he had spoken aloud. “Tanavast is king, Leras, and this world is dying. He has to take his people somewhere they can _live_.”

Skai had come forward to speak with Tanavast. They stood, heads together, a short distance from the others. Aona watched Skai, fondness more pronounced than usual in those dark eyes. The effects of Devotion, Leras wondered? It fit Aona, as Honor fit Tanavast. And even still the power was changing them both.

How much worse would it be for Ati?

“Some of the others have found new worlds,” Ati said, and the eagerness in his voice dragged Leras’s eyes around. “Dozens of planets, Leras! Can you imagine?”

“No,” Leras said. He still felt numb. The rest of the sixteen were wandering off, some alone, some in pairs. Edgli touched his spine as she passed. She smiled, then rippled like a mirage and was gone. Reya took Tanavast’s arm and pulled him away. They took the dirt track back towards the capital, but seemed to skim above the surface, moving far too quickly for the humans they had been.

Before long, Skai, Aona, and Ati were the only ones remaining.

“So that’s it?” Leras asked, as Skai turned away. The man paused. Leras remembered the lanky scholar he’d met so long ago. A cartographer, was it? The wars had changed him as much as anyone. He looked like a warrior now. “Are we just going to go our separate ways, pretend the last ten years never happened?”

Skai didn’t turn. His posture was all sharp lines, a stark contrast to Aona’s curves. They still looked like themselves, but exaggerated somehow. “We’re more than men now, Leras,” he said. “We’re gods. What do you think will happen if we all stayed in one place? What do you think would have happened if Rayse had attacked Tanavast instead of leaving?”

“It’s safer to split up,” Aona said.

Leras wanted to argue. He wanted to shout at the others for discarding hard-won friendships. Ati’s hand on his shoulder stopped him.

“Let them go, Leras.” Ati smiled, but his eyes showed the same sadness Leras felt. “We have to.”

No one said anything further. What was there to say? Skai and Aona stood side by side, hands raised as though to grasp some invisible force. They lurched forward, and were gone.

Ati remained by Leras’s side, silent. Leras couldn’t make himself turn. He didn’t want to watch Ati go.

“You knew this was coming? You’ve already decided where to go?” He meant it as a question, but it came out accusatory.

He felt rather than saw Ati’s nod.

“I’ve already picked out the perfect world for us.”

Leras spun. “For _us_?”

The grin was back. Carefree. Infectious. “You didn’t think you were rid of me, did you?” Ati laughed. “You aren’t _that_ lucky, old man.”

III.

It was Ati who discovered the secrets of creation. Alone, he could only destroy. Alone, Leras could only hold things in stasis.

Together, however, they could work miracles. They raised mountains and carved out seas. They took the primitive life they found on the new world and nurtured it, creating plants and animals like nothing the Cosmere had ever seen.

It made Leras wonder what his old friends had created, on those worlds they had claimed for themselves. What dominating topography had Skai etched into the earth? What exotic flora had Reya cultivated?

Such thoughts were growing rarer. Centuries had passed. Millenia. Leras no longer thought on the timescale of mortals. The few short years spent with the others seemed insignificant now.

But part of him—the part that was Preservation—wanted to remember. More than that. It wanted to return to the days when the Shards had been One. But since that was impossible, Leras contented himself with reminders. He wove _sixteen_ into the very fabric of the world. Plants with leaves arranged in sixteens. A cluster of sixteen lakes near the southern tip of the largest continent. Sixteen days from new moon to full.

Leras’s obsession with the number sixteen confused Ati. He didn’t protest, but he did question. Sometimes, Leras wondered if Ati even remembered the days before the Shattering. He was, fortunately, largely unchanged from that young man. Temperamental, perhaps, and a bit too fascinated with decay, but still kind. Still optimistic. Ruin’s influence was not as small as Leras would have liked, but neither was it as bad as he had feared.

They remained friends.

Some days, that was all that mattered.

IV.

 _Remind me why we haven’t we created humanity yet?_ Leras said.

He’d been feeling melancholy for the last few centuries. It was lonely, living so long with only one other person to talk to. He loved Ati like a son, but _Adonalsium_ , the boy had the shortest attention span Leras had ever seen. Halfway through sculpting a coastline and already Ati wanted to send a tsunami and make it wetlands instead.

And he never had agreed to let Leras bring sentience to their creations.

He felt something like a sigh from Ati, though they had long since abandoned even the facsimile of human bodies. Shardic powers didn’t do well when constrained.

 _There are too many problems,_ Ati said. _Practical as well as moral. Are you sure you could create sentient life, knowing it would die within a few decades?_

_Why should it have to die?_

Ati was silent. Leras could feel his writhing emotions like currents in a fog. The thought of a species exempt from Ruin’s control didn’t sit well with Ati’s Shard. Leras reached out with a wisp of Preservation’s power and soothed some of Ati’s unease.

_We are gods, Ati. Surely we can make a race that isn’t so frail as all the rest._

_Leras._

Leras stilled at the weight behind those two syllables. Ati shifted, gathering himself.

 _We could…_ Leras insisted. _We have the power_.

_That doesn’t mean we should use it._

It was times like this that Ati seemed most changed. There was weariness in his voice. Weariness born of age. It had been a long time since Leras had been a young man—but it had been nearly as long for Ati. They were old now. Ancient.

Ati paused for a moment, perhaps waiting for Leras to respond. Down below, a species of wild hare went extinct. Preservation bristled and reached out to shelter a forest dying of drought.

 _Man isn’t meant to be immortal_ , Ati said. We _aren’t meant to be immortal. Would you wish this on an entire species?_

Leras wavered. His rational mind—his _human_ mind—knew Ati was right. If he created humanity on this world, it would have to be mortal. Preservation balked at the thought.

 _I would deal with that part of it,_ Ati said. His presence reached out, blanketing the land in comforting gloom. _You would nurture them while they live, help them build civilizations. I would take them when their bodies wore out. I would see to the fall of kingdoms, religions, ways of life. That’s the way it has to be, Leras. And that’s the only way I’ll help you do this._

Leras agreed. Preservation resisted, but Leras was still his own master, and Ati spoke sense. All things ended, but that didn’t make them worthless. Hadn’t Ati taught him that millennia ago?

There was one other compromise that had to be made. Leras gave a fragment of his power to humanity. It upset the careful balance between Ruin and Preservation. It meant that the world would one day end. Leras thought it worth the sacrifice.

After all, as Ati had pointed out, they’d seen one world die already. If anyone would grant Scadrial a merciful end, it would be Ati.

And there were other worlds out there. Once Scadrial’s story came to a close, Leras and Ati could begin anew somewhere else.

V.

Preservation had let things go too far.

Ruin consumed the land, bit by bit, swallowing whole nations in his madness. He no longer eased men into their natural rest but hurtled them along in chaos and strife.

And only Preservation could stop him.

There was still a corner of his mind that remained human. And, for once, Leras was glad his Shard could not destroy. He knew it would have killed Ruin if it could have. And killing Ruin would have meant killing Ati.

Perhaps Ati was already dead.

The thought haunted Leras, in those rare moments when he remembered his human life. Remembered his friendship with the man who had become Ruin.

Their power had destroyed them. And Leras wanted to be done with it.

He had to be careful, while building the Well that would be Ati’s cage. If he let Preservation take over, he would forget his real purpose in tricking Ruin: not to save the world, but to save his friend.

He had to believe there was still some remnant of his friend trapped within Ruin’s shadow. It was the only thing keeping him going. Leras couldn’t free Ati. He couldn’t destroy Ruin. But he could hold Ati’s mind in stasis until someone—one of the humans Leras had helped to make—came along to destroy Ruin’s power.

Destroy it, or take it. Leras didn’t care which.

His betrayal surprised Ruin. That was the only reason Leras’s ploy succeeded. He wrapped his mind around Ati’s, releasing his power to keep Ruin’s busy in the world at large, and bound Ati within the Well of Ascension.

Ati fought, screaming, cursing Leras’s betrayal. There was real pain there, and Leras would have wept if he’d still had a body. Instead, he just held Ati tighter, suffering his resistance, weathering Ruin’s attacks from outside. Over the years, he felt his mind growing weak, but still he held on. Still he guarded Ati from himself.

And he waited, trusting in humanity to stop Ruin before Ati broke free and destroyed the last of himself.

Leras knew he wouldn’t live to see Ati free.

But at least he wouldn’t live to see Ati lost.


End file.
